You’ve been circling the same argument for months. You know the shape of it by now, the words, the silence that follows, the way the air changes in the room. Something is broken, or at least badly strained, and you’ve reached the point where you’re ready to say it out loud: “I think we need to go to therapy.”

Your partner says no.

And now you’re sitting with something that can feel worse than the original problem, the loneliness of wanting help that your partner won’t join you in seeking.

This is one of the most common, and most painful, positions people find themselves in. As a psychotherapist working with individuals and couples navigating complex relationship dynamics, I see it regularly. And what I want to say first is this: their refusal is rarely about not caring. Understanding that distinction is where most people need to start.

Why Partners Refuse Therapy — and What’s Usually Underneath It

When someone declines therapy, the surface reasons rarely tell the whole story.

“We don’t need that” can mean I’m frightened of what we might find. “It won’t help” often translates as I’ve learned not to trust that things can change. “It’s too expensive” or “too busy” might be genuine, but they’re also reliable shields against vulnerability.

For many people, particularly those who’ve built their sense of self around competence, control, or self-sufficiency entering a therapist’s room can feel like a profound admission of failure. The idea that a stranger will witness the intimacy of their difficulties, perhaps take sides, perhaps confirm their worst fears about themselves or the relationship, is genuinely threatening.

This doesn’t make the refusal easier to live with. But it does make it something you can work with, rather than simply against.

Before you try to persuade your partner, it’s worth getting genuinely curious: what is therapy representing to them? That question, asked with care rather than challenge, can shift the entire conversation.

How to Talk About Therapy Without Creating Another Argument

The way we raise the topic of therapy often inadvertently recreates the very dynamic we’re trying to change.

If our communication pattern involves one person pursuing and the other withdrawing, suggesting therapy in a moment of conflict or with an urgency that feels like pressure and it tends to trigger exactly that pattern again. The person who’s already inclined to pull back will pull back further.

Choose the right moment. Raise it when you’re not in the middle of a fight, when neither of you is exhausted or defensive. Some of the most productive conversations about seeking help happen in calm, ordinary moments.

Speak from your own experience, not from diagnosis of theirs. There’s a significant difference between “You shut down every time we argue” and “I feel really stuck, and I don’t know how to reach you when we’re in conflict. I think I’d benefit from some support with that.” The first invites defensiveness. The second invites connection.

Separate therapy from crisis. One of the most damaging myths about couples therapy is that it’s a last resort. Reframing it as a space for learning and growth, rather than emergency repair, can reduce the threat significantly. Many couples who come for therapy aren’t in crisis; they’re simply committed to doing things differently.

When They Still Say No: Starting Therapy Alone

If your partner remains unwilling, individual therapy is not a consolation prize. It is, in many cases, exactly the right place to begin.

There’s a common misunderstanding that because the problem exists between you, both of you need to be in the room for anything to shift. In practice, this isn’t how relationships work. When one person begins to regulate differently, when they understand their own attachment patterns, when they stop reacting and start responding, the relational dynamic has to reorganise itself around that change. Your partner cannot keep doing the same dance if you’ve stopped moving in the same way.

Individual therapy also offers you something couples work can’t fully provide: a space that is entirely yours. You can explore not just the relationship, but what you’re bringing to it and the patterns formed long before this partnership, the ways your own history shapes what you need and how you ask for it.

This is not about fixing yourself so your partner will agree to therapy. It’s about taking responsibility for your own growth, which is always worth doing regardless of what they decide.

Boundaries Are Not Ultimatums

At some point, if nothing changes, you will need to be honest with your partner and with yourself, about what you need.

A boundary isn’t a threat. It’s an honest statement about what you can and cannot continue to sustain. It might sound like: “I care about this relationship deeply. I’m also finding it increasingly difficult to keep going the way we have been. I’m committed to doing my own work, and I really hope we can do some of this together.”

That’s different from an ultimatum. It’s clear, it’s kind, and it’s honest. What it also does is communicate that you are serious and not in the way of a crisis, but in the way of someone who has thought carefully about what they need and is prepared to stand by it.

Accepting the Limits of Your Influence

This is the part that no one really wants to hear, but it’s important: you cannot make another person ready for therapy. You cannot accelerate someone else’s psychological timing, override their defences, or choose growth on their behalf.

What you can do is tend to your own growth, communicate clearly, and remain honest with your partner and with yourself, about whether what you’re receiving is enough.

Sometimes the decision to seek support individually is what eventually brings a reluctant partner around. When they witness real, sustained change and not just different words, but a different way of being, curiosity often replaces resistance. But that can’t be the reason you do it. You seek support because you deserve it. Because the relationship deserves it. Because you are done circling the same pattern.

A Final Word

Wanting help is not weakness. It is one of the more courageous things a person can do inside a relationship. To say, I think we can do this better, and I’m willing to do the work to find out.

If you’re in London and thinking about relationship therapy, whether individually or as a couple, I work with people navigating exactly these kinds of crossroads. You don’t have to wait for your partner to be ready before you begin.